right, i'm firmly in the atheist camp but.........

right, i'm firmly in the atheist camp but.........

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tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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Simpo Two said:
There comes a point where you have to say 'Too difficult' and go back to surfing the net... better men than you have tried to figure it out and failed so no point beating your brains out over it smile
haha!! i'm a stubborn bd though, and i'm not used to backing down from a fight. I suppose I might have to on this occasion!

tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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RDMcG said:
I have no belief in an intelligent creator,though I know people whom I respect who do have a wide variety of sincerely held religious faiths.
My bigger problem is that I had relatively little hard science in my education,and while I have over the years heard the big bang,expanding universe,red shifts,quantum physics and so on, I truly do not understand it. I tried reading Hawking's Brief History of Time. "Ah, I thought, a simple little book for idiots like me"
This was a best seller.
I did not understand it. Maybe everyone else did, but I came away as uneducated as ever. I think a good science grounding is an essential part one's education and I regret that it was not part of mine.
likewise mate, after a hundred or so pages all the words just sort of melted together. I really liked the start and the Einstein rubber sheet analogy for gravitational attraction but not too long after the wheels came off!

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
Simpo Two said:
There comes a point where you have to say 'Too difficult' and go back to surfing the net... better men than you have tried to figure it out and failed so no point beating your brains out over it smile
haha!! i'm a stubborn bd though, and i'm not used to backing down from a fight. I suppose I might have to on this occasion!
To be honest, I'm with Simpo. If the biggest brains on the planet throughout the history of mankind have struggled with such issues, what hope have I in coming up with an answer?

I am content to just stare and wonder - and revel in the beauty of the place. When I see a Hubble deep field view of thousands of galaxies my reaction is "Wow" - not "Why?".

tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Friday 24th October 2014
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
To be honest, I'm with Simpo. If the biggest brains on the planet throughout the history of mankind have struggled with such issues, what hope have I in coming up with an answer?

I am content to just stare and wonder - and revel in the beauty of the place. When I see a Hubble deep field view of thousands of galaxies my reaction is "Wow" - not "Why?".
haha! hubble deep field made me go............ "wow!!!!!" , closely followed by "how??" rather than "why?"

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
haha! hubble deep field made me go............ "wow!!!!!" , closely followed by "how??" rather than "why?"
"How" I can cope with - just about.

"Why" is beyond my mental processes.

SpeckledJim

31,608 posts

252 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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It's only our arrogance in thinking that because we can understand the idea of 'why' that there must therefore be a 'why'.

The dinosaurs didn't understand 'why' so it wasn't important to them. They just got on with surviving and reproducing.

The odds of a 'you' are infinitesimally small, but once there is a 'you' the odds on him wondering 'why' are 1 in 1.

If a 6 were sentient, but only when he was rolled, then he'll think someone must be rolling a 6 on purpose and wonder why, because he isn't aware of all the other rolls that leave him out.

tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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SpeckledJim said:
If a 6 were sentient, but only when he was rolled, then he'll think someone must be rolling a 6 on purpose and wonder why, because he isn't aware of all the other rolls that leave him out.
I like that analogy!

Funk

26,254 posts

208 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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There is no 'almighty creator'. It's also statistically pretty much impossible that we're alone in the universe which is quite cool.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,248 posts

149 months

Friday 24th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
but it does seem a touch far fetched that there was nothing, a load of stuff appeared from nowhere then lumped together into something that actually understood what it itself was......
It's much less far fetched than some form of creator or plan.

hidetheelephants

23,755 posts

192 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
when you think about the whole shooting match, the big bang, creation of the universe.......a long period of time until the first stars burst into life.....those first generations of stars die and explode causing all the exciting stuff to get everywhere.

eventually our sun is born and all the crap and debris amalgamates into the solar system. wind the clock forward a bit more and life just sort of happens and eventually a load of hairy arsed monkeys start to figure out what all these celestial bodies are. before you know it we've worked out what and where we are along with everything else we can see in the sky.

so essentially, everything explodes from nothing and all those random elements eventually bunch together in a pattern to form us. we are the universe, being made up of bits of dead stars. the universe is self aware through our eyes. the universe has become self aware by apparent random accidents over billions of years. from the standpoint of this planet (and possibly countless other planets) the universe can see and start to understand what it actually is......

........this occurred to me and subsequently fried my brain. I don't believe in "a god" in the traditional bloke with a beard routine. and up to this point I have never had to subscribe to the need for some sort of creator. but it does seem a touch far fetched that there was nothing, a load of stuff appeared from nowhere then lumped together into something that actually understood what it itself was......

my brain has just imploded again.
Answering these questions, or at least trying to, is the main reason for the LHC; it's possible we will know these things one day, whereas we're never going to know about bearded(or non-bearded) skyfairies.
m1dg3 said:
Yeah, but there are an infinite number of universes and only the ones capable of evolving sentient life will have sentient life to ponder such questions. So, even if it is extremely rare, it is inevitable that you'll only exist in the perfect conditions.

Disclaimer: whether or not there are multiple universes is cutting-edge physics and opinion is divided. It is entirely possible this is an untestabe hypothesis and therefore beyond the scope of science.
Beyond the scope of current science; if you'd told the average Victorian it would be possible to travel from the UK to Australia in a day and to the moon in 3 would they have believed it, or the average Roman that Heralds would be replaced with electrons in metal wires and photons in glass fibres?

tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Monday 27th October 2014
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one thing's for sure......given the exponential growth curve over the last hundred years I wish I had been born a thousand years later than I was. year of birth 2975....that would be ace!!

SpeckledJim

31,608 posts

252 months

Monday 27th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
one thing's for sure......given the exponential growth curve over the last hundred years I wish I had been born a thousand years later than I was. year of birth 2975....that would be ace!!
Unlucky, that's 2 years after the earth is demolished to make way for the new pan-galactic highway. Whoops!

tuscaneer

Original Poster:

7,738 posts

224 months

Monday 27th October 2014
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SpeckledJim said:
Unlucky, that's 2 years after the earth is demolished to make way for the new pan-galactic highway. Whoops!
ha!

makes you think though doesn't it......such a small window of time (on a universal scale) for us to burst into existence then be snuffed out by a random cataclysmic event like an asteroid strike, or that massive weak spot under yellowstone park giving way etc. etc.

how much longer can we exist?

I think I saw it on the sky at night where we are currently observing the early formation of another solar system not too far away, it blows my mind to think there could have been civilizations observing the formation of our solar system that were extinct billions of years before we turned up.

a thousand years of development feels like an eternity but in actual fact it is nothing

Moonhawk

10,730 posts

218 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
......but it does seem a touch far fetched that there was nothing, a load of stuff appeared from nowhere then lumped together into something that actually understood what it itself was......

my brain has just imploded again.
The problem is - none of the leading scientific theories state there was "nothing".

Also - working backwards from where we are now, and thinking how improbable it is that we should exist at all is kinda going down the "intelligent puddle" route.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe#I...

For all we know - life existing may be an inevitable consequence of this universe - just like galaxies, stars, matter, energy and time appear to be. Life may not be anything special - it may simply be something that matter does under certain conditions (much like water boils given the right temperature/pressure). Life appears to evolve to fit the conditions - much like the puddle will fit the hole it finds itself in. The hole wasn't designed specifically for the puddle, the puddle merely grew to fit the hole. The same may be true of life in the universe. If so - the question asking why conditions on earth are perfect for life may actually be pointless. Conditions are perfect because the life grew to take advantage of the conditions that existed.

Edited by Moonhawk on Wednesday 29th October 09:42

jmorgan

36,010 posts

283 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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Ah, the puddle.

http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Bit of a long read but interesting.

SpeckledJim

31,608 posts

252 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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Moonhawk said:
The problem is - none of the leading scientific theories state there was "nothing".

Also - working backwards from where we are now, and thinking how improbable it is that we should exist at all is kinda going down the "intelligent puddle" route.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe#I...

For all we know - life existing may be an inevitable consequence of this universe - just like galaxies, stars, matter, energy and time appear to be. Life may not be anything special - it may simply be something that matter does under certain conditions (much like water boils given the right temperature/pressure). Life appears to evolve to fit the conditions - much like the puddle will fit the hole it finds itself in. The hole wasn't designed specifically for the puddle, the puddle merely grew to fit the hole. The same may be true of life in the universe. If so - the question asking why conditions on earth are perfect for life may actually be pointless. Conditions are perfect because the life grew to take advantage of the conditions that existed.

Edited by Moonhawk on Wednesday 29th October 09:42
That's the nub of it. The hard-of-thinking look around and say "these conditions are perfect, so why am I here?"

instead of "these conditions are perfect, and that's why I am here"

Remove the assumption that we're special from the set of considerations, and the big 'mystery of life' ballst dissolves.

Simpo Two

85,148 posts

264 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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Yes, I think just a biological happenstance that eventually gained the ability to go 'der'.

XM5ER

5,087 posts

247 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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tuscaneer said:
......but it does seem a touch far fetched that there was nothing, a load of stuff appeared from nowhere then lumped together into something that actually understood what it itself was......

my brain has just imploded again.
It may well be far fetched but it is the current working theory and may be blown out of the water by a better one at any time. Thats whats so great about science and why your question is welcome here. Keep blowing your mind as every time you put it back together it will be a bit different to the last time. Why vs how? How is a great question, I'm not sure why is valid on this subject, D Adams sums it up wonderfully.

As for the all the "don't ponder the question and far better people have failed before you" comments. How utterly patronizing, ponder away, you have a mind with which to ponder and that's what makes mankind so fabulous.


Simpo Two

85,148 posts

264 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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XM5ER said:
tuscaneer said:
......but it does seem a touch far fetched that there was nothing, a load of stuff appeared from nowhere then lumped together into something that actually understood what it itself was......

my brain has just imploded again.
It may well be far fetched but it is the current working theory and may be blown out of the water by a better one at any time. Thats whats so great about science and why your question is welcome here. Keep blowing your mind as every time you put it back together it will be a bit different to the last time. Why vs how? How is a great question, I'm not sure why is valid on this subject, D Adams sums it up wonderfully.

As for the all the "don't ponder the question and far better people have failed before you" comments. How utterly patronizing, ponder away, you have a mind with which to ponder and that's what makes mankind so fabulous.
Not patronising at all, merely a fact. The OP is free to ponder all he likes, but he's not going to extend the frontiers of human knowledge, merely come up with a random list of what ifs and maybes which achieve nothing other than make more lists of ifs and maybes.

As for 'a load of stuff appeared from nowhere', matter and energy are interconvertible.

Moonhawk

10,730 posts

218 months

Wednesday 29th October 2014
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XM5ER said:
It may well be far fetched but it is the current working theory......
It isn't. None of the leading scientific theories regarding the 'creation' of the universe start with "nothing" as one of their starting assumptions or conditions.

Big bang theory only gets us as far back as the plank epoch (10^-43 seconds) after the big bang had already begun - the starting conditions for big bang theory are a massive, hot, dense expanding object of (as yet) unknown origin.